Silvie Senauke
The Life of Adam White

When Adam White was born he weighed seven and one-half pounds, the average birth weight of an American baby. He had ten fingers and ten toes. He was bald. He cried loudly. The nurses cooed over him and he won the cutest baby contest in the hospital. His parents beamed and glowed. They took him home a day after his birth and put him in a nursery they had painted blue.
    Three weeks later Adam still hadn't stopped crying. His parents—nice, suburban people—were frantic.
    At two months old, Adam had not stopped crying for more than a minute, as far as his parents could tell. But when he cried, it wasn't the wailing of a baby trying to communicate something. Instead, tears streamed from his eyes no matter what mood he seemed to be in. His parents had contacted every specialist and pediatrician they could find, but no one knew what to make of Adam's condition. Besides the crying, Adam was healthy.
    As he grew up, everything else about Adam was normal. He followed the average growth curve almost exactly. He liked cars and construction machines. At age seven he played on his first soccer team. In middle school he added cross country. But in fact, there was one other thing that wasn't normal for Adam: his social life. He had a hard time making friends. This wasn't particularly surprising for anyone who knew him (his mother had started taking anti-depressants when she realized her son would never be the perfect boy she wanted him to be). In elementary and middle school the other kids made fun of him so much that his parents sent him away to a prestigious private high school for kids with strange disabilities. Unfortunately for Adam, the disabilities the other teens had were more like Elephant Man's Disease than uncontrollable tears. Even there he felt like an outcast. He was too weird to be in the normal world and too normal to be in the weird world.
    By the end of his high school years, Adam had decided he was done with learning institutions in general. He went home to meet his parents' second child, a little girl named Lily. She was three months old and she was Adam's first friend. Adam liked to think that she felt connected to him because she cried almost as much as he did, but really babies are just more accepting than grown-ups. Still, Adam realized that he couldn't spend his whole life playing with Lily. At nineteen, he set out to get a job.
    Sadly, no one would hire him. For obvious reasons, he couldn't get a job in any sort of retail or customer service position. Any interviewer Adam encountered from a corporation gave him a surprised glance and made a neat little check mark on some hidden box on the review sheet before the conversation had even begun. On top of all this, any clothes he wore would become soaked in salty tears within an hour, which made many jobs requiring uniforms or dry cleaning unacceptable. If it was a job where he had to sit for many hours at a time, small pools of tears would also form on the thighs of his pants. If he hadn't already been doing it, Adam would have cried out of frustration.
    Like most, however, Adam eventually stumbled onto a career path. He taught himself computer programming out of books he bought online, and did freelance work out of his bedroom in his parents' house. This was a good solution because Adam was free to change positions often to stop the tears from collecting anywhere in particular, and it allowed him ample time to hang out with Lily. Besides this, it paid quite well, which made Adam's parents happier about him than he had ever seen them.
   
    Aside from his programming business, Adam didn't do much. He had always been in the habit of staying away from large groups of people. It was a sort of self-preservation instinct, grown out of his fear of being ridiculed. So, he learned to love a lot of indoor things. He often played video games with Lily (their favorite was an old boxing one). He became a pinball champ, and spent an hour when he woke up and another before bed lifting weights. However, this close interaction with objects was dangerous for Adam. He was afraid to let his waterfall of tears spill onto them (especially the electric ones). He first developed a severe crick in his neck from leaning away from the devices. When that became unbearable, he decided he had to do something a bit more drastic.
    His first invention to remedy the situation was a kind of collar to which he affixed two small bowls on either side of his head, intended to catch his tears. This turned out to be more of nuisance than a relief, however; the bowls would quickly fill, which resulted in several problems. The weight of the tears would cause the collar to sag, and often ended up choking him. In addition, any small movement of his body once they were full would cause massive overflow, which was liable to result even more damage than the tears in their original form. At the end of a week, Adam ripped off the creation—the tears just came too damn fast for him to empty the bowls often enough.
    Next he tried a sort of vest made of sponges, but had the same general problems. Sure, the sponges absorbed his tears, but they gained weight at an alarming rate. Once they were full, they started dripping into his pants, causing an awkward and uncomfortable wetness. This invention, too, ended up in the trash bin.
    "I mean, think about it. What would you do if you saw a person walking around with a dog collar attached to bowls around his neck, or a sponge vest!" Adam burst out to Lily one afternoon. "You'd think he was really a lunatic. Probably even more than if you just saw him walking around crying!" Lily stared at him with wide eyes. She was six.
    He sighed, patted her on the head, and walked out of the house. It was raining so he felt it was safe to go outside; his tears would mingle with the raindrops. He stood in the middle of the empty street and cried.
    Television proved one of the few forms of entertainment Adam could truly enjoy. He'd commandeered the guest bathroom (his parents rarely had guests because, Adam believed, they were embarrassed of him). He set a small television on a small table at the end of the bathtub and would lie in it, in his bathing suit, watching television. One afternoon he was flipping through channels when he came across a commercial for some movie called Boys Don't Cry. In an anxious effort to get away from that station, he randomly pressed buttons on the remote. The resulting image happened to be a middle aged man bawling into a camera screen. Adam clenched his teeth and gripped the remote tighter. He knew what was coming; either this man was about to get beaten up or he would roll into bed with his wife, communication problems solved. About to change the channel again, he noticed the word "live" in the bottom lefthand corner and realized this was no trashy movie. Intrigued, Adam kept watching.
    It turned out that it was the end of some baseball game, Adam didn't know who was playing, and the crying man was a fan of the losing team. Even more interestingly, many of the people were crying. Maybe fifty. No, hundreds. No, thousands. Maybe thousands was too many. But definitely hundreds. Adam was fixated. He stared at the TV until it went to commercial, but he couldn't get the image out of his head. A man—many men—crying in public. He felt something settle inside of him. The baseball stadium must be the place for him, his true home, he thought to himself. He immediately started to make plans to investigate the nearest and next baseball game he could attend.
    Four days later he stepped over the threshold of the Giants baseball stadium. He'd traveled an hour and a half to get there, a baseball cap shoved over his forehead to hide his tears. He'd arrived partway through the game in hopes of getting there after someone was already decisively losing, so he could get straight to the crying party. He had chosen a plain black baseball cap so that he would be free to support whichever team was losing, and he walked in excited and expectant. He threw his ticket into the trash as soon as he got passed the ticket checkers. He didn't care about his assigned seat; he intended to head directly to wherever he saw tears.
    After figuring out which team was losing, he sped—almost running—over to the seats behind that team's dugout. His heart almost bursting with excitement, Adam ripped off his baseball cap and let his tears flow freely. He felt alive. He felt accepted. He felt complete. He felt understood. He felt comfortable. He felt whole. He'd finally found the place where he could just be himself.
    From in front of him he heard someone cough. Except it really sounded more like a snicker. Adam looked around. Instead of a sea of tear-streaked faces like that he had seen on the television, he saw a crowd of normal people. Some of them looked bored, some distracted, some focused on the game, and just a few who looked really distraught over the loss of the team (Adam hadn't even registered the name in his excitement to get there). What he didn't see was anyone crying. The snickering was beginning to come from seats all around him, and suddenly Adam felt overexposed, naked. He sank down into his seat like a deflated balloon. Leaning over, he fished around on the floor for the cap he had prematurely abandoned. He picked it up and grimaced at the half eaten nachos it had landed in. The game went on around him, the team fell further behind, but still no one cried. Adam shoved the cap back on.
    When he got home he slunk directly into the bathroom he'd set up for himself. He changed into his bathing suit and lay down in the tub, relieved to finally not have to worry about hiding his face. It had been a long train-ride home. It was times like these that Adam cursed the government for denying him a driver's license on account of "obstructed vision".
Reaching for the remote, Adam returned to the baseball game that had ignited his hope, which he'd recorded. While the bath slowly filled with his tears, Adam listened to the words the sportscaster was saying.
"And this is really just a tragic game, folks. We are currently witnessing the collapse of the Yankees' undefeated season, and as you can tell the fans here are just beside themselves. I would not want to be any one of these Yankees players right now, I'll tell you that; they've got a whole lot of angry fans to answer to. And boy, I've never seen so many grown men cry in my life. This is really just an almost-hysterical mood here—" Adam turned off the sound. He cursed himself. He slammed his hands into the inch-or-so of water swishing around in the bottom of the tub, creating a satisfying splash. If only he hadn't been so hasty, maybe he would have realized that, of course, this was no normal occurrence. It was some big game, and the outcome was unexpected. Even the commentator had admitted that so much crying was uncommon, almost unheard of. Maybe if he'd noticed that then Adam wouldn't have had to have all of his hopes crushed mercilessly by snickering so similar to what he had fled from in school.

The next day Adam's father knocked on the door of Adam's room. This was a rare occurrence, so Adam jumped up immediately and opened the door, sending teardrops flying off his water-repellent shirt.
"So, Adam. There's something I think we should talk about." Adam tried to look as curious as he could while crying. "It's, well, it's about Lily."
"She's alright, isn't she? I haven't noticed anything wrong with her," Adam blurted out, his mind racing to think if she'd been to the doctor recently or complained about trouble at school.
"Ah yes, she's fine. Physically, I mean. Nothing to be worried about." He looked like he was about to reach out and pat Adam on the shoulder, but stopped himself, eying the puddles that had formed there. "It's just… She's recently brought up a concern to us. She's explained that she feels uncomfortable bringing her friends over here. And it's, I mean, to be perfectly honest, it's on account of you. She's afraid you'll frighten them." He paused, as if to see how Adam was taking this in. It was hard to tell. "Anyways, we thought that with this, and how long it's been… it just seems time for you to find your own place. Your business is going great, so you shouldn't have any financial troubles. It seems like circumstances are right." With that Adam's father stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. Adam sat dumbstruck as the footsteps faded away. He felt numb.

Three weeks later Adam had moved out.  He'd found an apartment in the same area as his parent's house, so he could still see Lily. He was shaken that he had been causing her pain, and angry at himself for letting the discomfort he had had to live with since he was born interfere with her life as well. But he thought he would miss her sweet and welcoming presence too much if he couldn't visit her often.
If he'd had friends he would have called his new apartment a bachelor pad with them. But he didn't  call it this, for two reasons. First, he didn't have anyone to joke with about it, and second, he didn't expect to be bringing many girls back to it, so the name seemed inappropriate. Instead, he called it his giant bathtub. In his head. He'd set plastic mats out across the entire floor so that he didn't experience the rug-turning-into-sponge phenomenon that had happened in his parents house. He'd bought rubber sheets (online, so he didn't have to face a salesperson). All in all, he'd created a much more comfortable living environment than the one he'd had at home. In fact, once he discovered the funerals, Adam was the happiest he'd ever been in his life.
Adam discovered the funerals one sunny day when he was hiding in his apartment, peering out of the window at the normal people on the street below. On this particular day he noticed that a lot of people were wearing black, which was odd since it was such a hot day. It seemed to be a procession of some sort, Adam wasn't sure. But in a tight knot he could tell there was a group of four or five people sobbing. The more interesting part was that no one shied away from them. No one pretended to ignore them. In fact, it seemed like most of the attention was focused on them. Intrigued, Adam pulled his baseball cap on and headed out to follow them.
The procession continued for a couple blocks, heading in the opposite direction from his parent's house, until the group came to a cemetery. Adam had always known that people were allowed to cry openly at funerals, but he'd never witnessed it. At that moment, though, he keenly felt the open support that went to those in tears, and his own heart yearned to be there. Instead, he hung around outside of the gates until the group disappeared over a hill and their quiet murmur dissipated. On his way, Adam realized that the group had left from a funeral home a few houses away from his own apartment. He arrived home with an extra bounce in his step, but he tried not to get his hopes up too much; he didn't want to experience another disappointment like the baseball game.
In the following weeks Adam checked the event board at the funeral home each day, and learned how to slink into the funeral party unobtrusively. At first he'd just loiter near the back of the crowd and watch, but he slowly started mingling more. People he didn't know would just come up and give him a hug, and they shared tears with or without words of condolence. On one occasion he got too comfortable and slowly worked his way toward the center of the group, where some sobbing man asked, "And how did you know my dear Julia?" to which Adam had mumbled something about college and dorms. "But Julia went to Lutheran Women's College," the man said, confused. Adam quickly backed away.
The funerals weren't exactly fun. A group of mourners aren't really the liveliest, or, obviously, happiest group of people ever. Still, they afforded Adam a level of comfort around others that he had never experienced before. The funeral home became his second home. In fact, for some time, Adam even forgot entirely about going to visit Lily. It wasn't until he saw her birthday marked on his calendar, almost lost among the big funerals he had noted, that Adam walked the few blocks back to his childhood house.
He let himself into the front door to find Lily lying on the floor playing video games. "Hey Lily, how've you been?" he asked her, moving to sit beside her.
"It's almost my birthday," she said, not turning away from the television.
"I know! Are you excited to be seven?"
"I'm going to have a big party with everyone from my class. I don't want you to come," Lily said, still not turning to face him. Adam was puzzled. He suspected that younger siblings often didn't want their older siblings around, but he and Lily had always been close.
"Are you sure?" he finally asked.
"Only babies cry and I'm going to be seven so I'm not a baby and I don't want any babies at my part and that means you." Adam's waterproof jacket rustled and pools of tears ran off onto the floor as he switched positions, uncomfortable around the one person he had always felt comfortable with.
"But Lily, you know I'm not a baby," Adam tried to say playfully, but it came out more choked. Finally Lily stood up and faced him.
"I hate you," she said with an even voice. "You're a wimpy loser and I don't want you at my party." With that she turned and walked out of the room. Adam sat there dumbstruck, half-hearing the grunts of Lily's favorite boxing game.
After that Adam was depressed. He stopped going to funerals. He felt like they were the reason he hadn't gone to see Lily more often, and thus the reason she hated him now. But neither could he stand just sitting at home watching television. He tried new locations where he might not feel alone. He visited the emergency room, but although many people there were crying, each person was doing so alone. It made Adam feel even more isolated. He went to a couple more sports games, with a vague hope that the one he'd been to had been unusually unwelcoming, but he didn't seen anyone crying at these either. He started swimming, in hopes that the water would hide his tears, but he didn't have enough energy to exercise. He looked up some depression groups, but they wanted Adam to talk about his feelings, and Adam didn't want to. He just wanted to be able to be like everybody else. Instead he had tears.
The worst part was that losing Lily's support had caused him to doubt himself. While Lily had accepted him, Adam had always felt like there was a community out there, somewhere, that would accept him too. Now he began to feel that he truly was all alone in the world. He began to believe that he'd be counted as a freak wherever he went. He stopped working, stopped trying to look for places he'd be comfortable. He'd stay in bed for days on end, until the blankets and mattress had become so soaked with his tears that it was like he was lying in a giant puddle. He even stopped watching TV; he couldn't face looking at all of the normal people and there preposterously normal lives.
One day Adam woke up feeling almost good. At least, he felt better than he had since he had gone to see Lily. Unusually heartened, he got up and decided to see if there was a funeral going on. He told himself it would do him good to get out and have contact with other people. He went to his closet to get out his nice suit, but couldn't find it. Setting that aside to worry about later, he put on a nice pair of grey pants and a black shirt instead. He rolled up the pants legs and waded through the inches of tears that had built up during the time he hadn't left the house.
He was happy to see that there was a funeral. A rather small crowd, but a funeral crowd nonetheless. He kept his head down like he always did when it was a small funeral. When there were fewer people, if he made eye contact with any one of them they'd be sure to ask pesky questions, like how did he know the deceased. The group followed the familiar route towards the cemetery, with Adam hanging behind, careful not to draw too much attention to himself. He didn't hear anyone else crying, which made him self-conscious about the wet marks forming on his shoulders and dripping down onto his chest.
Inside the cemetery the group stopped near an open grave. Adam looked up to see why no one in the group was crying. To his surprise, he knew everyone. There was his mother and father, Lily, his grandmother, and two of his uncles. Out of habit, Adam tried to wipe his cheeks clean of tears, and went back to looking at the ground, trying to hide in plain sight. As the priest spoke, Adam inched forward towards the grave, in which lay an open coffin.
At first he thought the coffin held a mirror. Then he realized that didn't make sense. Still, the other option didn't make much sense either. Adam stared at the body in the coffin and recognized it as his own, dressed in the suit that had been missing frfom his closet that morning. Frantic, he reached for the hand of the body in the coffin, unable to believe that it was lifeless. Holding the hand, he realized that the body in the coffin had a powdered face. It wasn't crying. Leaning closer over the body, Adam closed his eyes. His cheeks were dry.